On relaxing in the hard pose.

Sure, the Sutras define asana as a comfortable seat. One can aspire to this.

But that's more of a discovery than a goal; how does one AIM for ease? What would you do, particularly if achieving an expression takes effort? How and where do you dial it up and dial it down? That, at the least, takes experience.

Today's Marichyasana C suprised me with its flexibility and relative ease. Months ago, playing the backbending edge made my twists unmanageable, with the lateral hip tension that edgy backbending brings. But not so now. Ta-da, a comfortable seat. But I've been doing Marichyasana C since 2004. See? Experience.

Kapotasana. I had big, BIG ones on Wednesday and Friday last week, both (again, I tend not to do just Primary on Fridays, because I can't practice on Sundays, so I bump the practice week down one day and do Primary in a studio class on Saturdays). But I also, later on Friday and through the weekend, had some weird back pain, above the iliac crest and below the ribs, on the right side.

That's where the quadratus lumborum is, and I was getting some snaggy muscle tightness today (and last night in the Intro to Intermediate class) in all of the upward-facing dogs; the only thing that made it lay back was RELAXING the spinal flexors, especially when bending the back. What does that mean? Muscularly, it felt like it meant this: take MORE pose in the psoas/flexors LENGTHENING, and take LESS pose in PULLING the QL TIGHT. Or, more simply, lengthen the spine, make room between those vertebrae! The more room I got, the TALLER I got, the easier all of the backbends were.

This, of course, is a lesson that has applications well beyond just easing pain in backbends; it's a major tenet of backbending in general.

Monday night's Urdhva Dhanurasanas were kind of painful in the QL; today's backbends (Kapo included) weren't. True, I only got toe-knuckles today (by which I mean the big ones in the foot, not just the toe-divots), but that's with being careful and lacking the CRAZY drive that I had last week.

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I am back on the Kino backbending formula, with a dash of Grimmly added for flavor:

3-5 from the floor (I'm trying for 3 @ 8 breaths per, right now)
3 dropbacks, with walking in and fingertipping, but no rocking to standing
(trying to untrain myself from the rock up, per Boodi/Grim)
1 "final backbend" with walking in, head down, walk in to elbows, press up.
(chakra bandhasana training)

It's working. My post-walk-in distance (heels of feet to heels of hands) in the backbends is shoulders-to-greater trochanter, which is maybe 18-20 inches. A few inches closer in the "final" backbend. This is much closer than last summer's 28 inches.

Ok Universe, is this the next bit of Education?

Classes with travelling teachers have historically been difficult for me to get to, because of

1. Cash
2. Time
3. Distance

and so I check out workshop scenes and Mysore-style opportunities in some depth and as in advance as I can, to see what/if I can get to. October's weekend with Kino hit the spot just right, and with seventh series being more demanding of both my time and my cash, finding a workshop has become damn difficult, which actually has made me a more attentive and somewhat stricter teacher of myself.

Is this the next one, Universe? I hereby toss the question:

There are, as far as I'm concerned, two studios in Chicago which do Ashtanga. I know there are more than that, but the only ones I check for workshops are the one that Kino visits twice a year (because it rocks) and the other one northwest of it where a famous ashtanga blogger used to teach.

Tim Miller. First weekend of June. Intermediate, Bandhas, Primary, Adjustments, Improv. Sounds like a sexy freakin' weekend.

I'll be teaching at that point, but for three hours a day on Monday/Wednesday; no interference. I might well be cash-light, but I am ALWAYS cash-light. Friday session starts at NOON, so a morning drive up is easy. Hostel show is cheap for two nights (Fri/Sat). Public transport in that city, rocks socks.

I have spoken, Beings! Send a reply!

Kapotasana, and it's STILL Say Hello Week!

Scattershot practice this week, but it's been brilliant when I can get to it. Back to my regular classical program, Primary and to Kapotasana. Still doing it twice at the end, and the second Kapo is clearly deeper than the first now (that wasn't the case a couple months ago).

Wednesday's Kapotasana was a firm toe grab on the first drop, and then a visibly lower hang for the second one (it's nice having windows to the pool behind me at the Y there; I can use the horizontal bars, or even the pool lanes, to gauge the depth of my hangbacks, both kneeling and standing) and a grab of the toe "knuckles," if you will.

Here: put your hand on the bottom of your foot. Chances are you feel the toes, then the divot between them and the foot, and then the knuckles (on my feet, it's hard to feel any clearly except the big round rise of the big toe) and then the long smoothness of the arch, and finally the grand round rise of the heel.

One never imagines that one's own foot is going to become careful geography to be negotiated a millimeter at a time. Until one does Kapotasana.

So beyond the toes now, somewhat regularly (I also got beyond the toes with both grabs earlier today).

I am still doing what Kino told me to do in October: don't walk in unless you PRESS UP first, and YE GODS does that crank the pose into the lumbar spine (on me anyway). I think that what happens (this is utter speculation) is that my quite strong hip flexors and abs don't give easily, which means that DESPITE the lumbar spine wanting to backbend, it can't really, until the front body lets up.

Thus, I tend to take backbends right in the low abs and, as we've seen, the hip flexors. All those MONTHS upon freakin' MONTHS of white nerve intensity in there, stretching those suckers out. And thus, slow, SLOW development of hangbacks, of dropbacks, of Kapotasana itself. To say nothing of various psychological challenges.

It isn't proper for me to say the pose cranks into the lumbar; my abdominals and flexors still guard that door, and so (fortunately, a point which I do not miss) it's getting *flexibility* into that *strength* which then allows the still very intense bend. Because it's been hard for me to walk my hands in, in Urdhva Dhanurasana (it isn't now, but it historically has been), walking in in Kapotasana (where basically you have to, at the start, or at least I have had to) has been easier, simply because it hasn't been optional.

There's been this pendulum development between my UD hangbacks/dropbacks/standups and Kapotasana; the two have fed each other. Trying Kapo before being able to drop and stand *did* intensify the backbending necessary for dropping and standing, and then more attention to trying to drop, did develop some of the front body opening for deeper Kapo, and so on and so forth. Over the last two years, as of 2008, when I decided to OFFICIALLY pursue Kapotasana to the limits of possibility (and that was the summer that I got put in it half a dozen times).

The Y has gym mats, you know, the approximately inch-tall, soft, stretching mats. I lie my Jade Harmony (which is orange, over the Y mats blue, interesting color combo) over the Y mats and I go for it. For the kneeling backbends, I pull out well in front of the mats, so that my toes can be on nothing but the Jade and the carpeted floor. This has meant that for Kapo, there is a "line" between the gym mats and the floor, which helps me to estimate how deep the pose is. If I land on squishy, I have more walking in to do. If I land non-squishy, I'm damn close to my toes.

Why not practice on the Manduka black? It's not as friction-ful as the Jade, man. It's harder to walk in on for Kapotasana. Plus, it doesn't lay as nicely over the gym mats.

This afternoon I landed first on the squishy, and walked easily over into the non-squishy and then up the sides of my feet (along the outside, close). I simply could go no further (that is, I got too stressed out to be patient and hang out down there) and grabbed the footpad beyond the toes, took five, moved my hands clear of my feet, and they slipped even further back, so the Kapo B wasn't that intense.

Then I figured I'd try Liz's now famous bit about hands back first, and arched, looking up into the room, not backward toward the pool windows. I reached back, arched and hung, still looking toward my chest, and then dropped, and landed on the non-squishy (well, palms touching gym mat, but fingers not). Score! That's a damn deep Kapo landing if you're me, that's practically toes. I pressed up, walked in, pressed up again (hard!!) and walked in and walked in just a bit further, into the beginning of the smooth arch territory. But I couldn't grab the foot there, there just wasn't any friction, so I backed off to toe knuckles and then pressed up just beyond the toes, for Kapo B.

I was more tired today than Wednesday; when I came up from Wednesday's second Kapo, there was this MASSIVE rush of energy, knees to over my head, like a water wave that then turned into digital pixelation, complete with crest and foam. Amazing sensation; it cracked me up, there was just so much surplus in it, and nothing negative at all, it was like this bizarre LOVE RINSE, like people who are religiously converted might feel.

I'm slightly sore in the right lower back musculature, and there was what felt like a threat of cramping today, in the Kapos, but nothing cramped (which I'm very glad about; a cramp in Kapo would SUCK). The glute maxes on both sides are feeling INTENSELY stretched, and as usual, there's some soreness in the lateral hips (yeah, suprise me, that's been there for two years on and off). But it all feels like what Kino called "work aches," it all feels sort of well-earned, appropriate and good.

No bad sensation in the spine proper, in the SI joints, nothing saying "beware."

Good.

I'd still love to bind heels in this bad thing before my birthday in about six weeks, but that's up to the gods, man.

Psoas, not glutes--and, it's Say Hello Week!

Not the glutes, in the right hip, but the PSOAS. This should have been obvious.

When I have a "tight hip day," where's the tension? Everywhere: mostly I experience it in the lateral hip (gluteus medius, TFL), but it's also vertical through the meat of the glute max, and weirdly out in the front of the quads, and also deep inside the hip, medially, by the deep flexors, AND on an especially tight day, up by the low vertebrae of the lumbar spine. Hmmmmm...it's as if there's some muscle or other that, say, runs from the lumbar over to the femur! Wow! Could there BE such a thing?????

Yeah, this is what I learned in this morning's Primary-plus-Pasasana.

Ease up on the psoas: less desk sitting (well, as possible; I'm an academic, remember) and less stress cranked deep into those muscles (again, as possible: hello, meditation practice).

More lunges in short "evening practices," more pigeons. Try sitting in those positions, grading, tending the kid, whatever.

Not depth, not stretching, cranking into it, but becoming EASY, establishing MOVEMENT there, becoming what Desiree Rumbaugh once in a backbend workshop called "a long silk ribbon."

**************************

AND

It's say hello week, you lurkers and fans and readers who stop by and never say anything; and it's all free! Come on by and say hello, no price will be exacted, no tolls will be taken, it's a potlatch!

Neither Boston nor Chicago.

No cities for me this week, well, except this one. Here's the story.

My brother and his wife and kid live about 40 minutes from Boston, where most of my tribe is from anyway. We had planned to fly out there on Sunday and stay until Thursday (that's today), but they had this big stomach illness/flu thing with fever, which ran through their whole household and was still up and kicking about on Saturday. Not good vibes. We then had a combination cold/sinus thing and then I got sudden uncrampy and otherwise asymptomatic diarrhea for two days straight (and so did one of our neighbors down the street, exact same non-symptoms), and that led up to Sunday morning, and we called the flight and cancelled, and it turns out that the flight had been oversold, so they permitted us to cancel and reschedule (tentatively Memorial Day weekend now, which is our kid's first birthday weekend) without the hundred bucks charge. Pretty sweet. I was clearing up on Sunday and back, slowly and progressively, to food, by Monday.

So no Boston.

This weekend, starting tomorrow morning, in fact, is Kino's spring tour of Chicago (I love calling it "spring tour," it's so Deadhead). Mysores, Intro to Second, a new thing called Breath and Bandha, and so on. I don't have the cash or the time. Well, that's not quite true; I do have the cash, but not if I want to keep paying off the student loan which is now under nine hundred bucks remaining, and the credit card, which is still at a couple grand but that's not much when you pay six to seven hundred per month on it, as I do. So it's a choice between a practice which, to be honest, I learned most of in October (my main takeaways from Kino were her "final backbend" and a brilliant Pasasana lesson), and continued payments on some of my major life stressors. Also, J needs time to do things like taxes while I baby-tend, and time to just HAVE LIFE while I baby-tend.

I give myself the "final backbend," and sure, it's deeper and comes with a guaranteed pop to standing, when you're adjusted, but I CAN put myself in it, and I do.

So I am, with EXCEEDING begrudgedness, not going to Chicago, either.

***********************************

Just real quickly? Fuck Spring Break. This is no goddamn break from anything.

************************************

Yesterday's practice: I've had two weeks of spotty I'm-not-sure inconsistent practice, with hip freakout pain, colds and snot, and the gastrointestinal revolt. It's been fucking hard to practice with any consistency. So what I usually do to "reset" the levels is go back to my Mysore-classical practice: 82 poses, up to Kapotasana, no Supta Vajrasana (as much as I think of those two as a pair). Backbends, closing.

So, back at the Y, feeling decent. Afternoon practice. A little teasing floating in the sun salutations. Just a little. If I thought about landing legs straight in the jump ups, I felt the crash landing in the knees, but if I just *let it be*, then it felt floaty.

Foot higher, it seems, in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana. I notice that even on shaky days, I don't worry about that pose anymore. It's not a big thing any longer. Took YEARS for that to come.

Face to shin in Ardha Baddha Padottanasana, which had been impossible on Friday's Primary, with the lingering hip pain/tightness. Good to have that back.

Low back stretching out of the same hip pain, in Paschimottanasana. Toes, sides, wrist. Standard.

Vinyasa has changed, again the teasing floatiness. I don't do the half-handstand vinyasas you see on YouTube. I do a cross-legged Bakasana-looking jump through, where I jump WELL forward of my hands, and then swing the crossed legs through, look UP, and take the crossed legs upward, as in a U-pipe (that's David Swenson's advice). It's harder than straight legs, and it builds SICK core strength, and actually I find it EASIER than straight legs, just because I'm used to it. It's what I learned to do, and it's what I've always done. On both Friday and yesterday's practice, I could FEEL the momentum slow as I hit the mid-air point where my legs swing through. The BAREST seed of hang time up there. And this was consistent at least through to Ubhaya Padangusthasana; I was able to hit two dozen vinyasas with that floaty teaser. I like it. I think about things like a floaty Bakasana B, or the strength for Karanda, and I like it. It's silly to like it for itself. In fact, it's as silly to like it for those poses too, but nonetheless...

A guy was watching me do Kurmasana/Supta Kurmasana, and usually I'm not too aware of the outside world by then, but this guy's gaze was SO HEAVY ON ME that I had to take note, send up an antenna. And of course, it was a big flat turtle and then an Intermediate entry to Supta, with a full Titti exit, really pretty stuff. I could actually FEEL his speechlessness, and I wasn't in the LEAST performing for him. Breathe, come up, feet behind, great; exhale, point; inhale, fold'em back! Breathe, move, get on with it.

By the end of Baddha Konasana I'd forgotten all about him.

I took knuckles (not a wrist, but close) in Supta Kurmasana and in both sides of Pasasana, which is a first on all counts. Usually I take eight fingers.

I did not expect to bind either Pasasana, so that was quite suprising. Hello again, right hip, you're very welcome.

Still like the buildup backbends, although I always, always, want a big adjustment in Bhekasana, I CRAVE that pull-back of the shoulders.

Kapotasana.

I saw my feet. For the first time ever. And sure, I've seen them from the side, looking over one arm, but I've never seen them from STRAIGHT BACK. Again, I did it twice. The first time I landed, walked in, was too low and knew it, and took Kino's advice, to push up! I pushed up FAR, much further than I expected, and got radical intensity right in the hip flexors, psoas territory. Too much. I took five and popped up. But I also learned that I could push up, into a pretty freakin' big Kapo B (although I was too far from my feet for it REALLY to be Kapo B).

So in the second attempt, I promised that I'd push up earlier, not get trapped in there. And that I'd keep walking. I landed, walked in, pushed up, and walked in more, again, more. I couldn't feel my toes, so I moved a finger in toward my head and felt the toes, right there. I walked in one more time and surrendered, took fingertips to footpads, past toes, and came down, took five, moved hands JUST past the feet, and pushed up, nearly straight-armed, and felt my low back GIVE ME MORE SPACE. Just like Boodi has said about her bends: it's the LUMBAR that has MORE TO GIVE. And I mean like three vertebrae worth of more space, a LOT more space.

I felt it in the outer shoulders, the lumbar proper, and the iliopsoas; all good; all intense stretches, no pain, nothing white. As Kino put it, the kind of pain "which means you have to keep working." Safe, red, pink, juicy intensity, nothing like that white nerve pain.

It was in that final Kapo B that I saw the feet. Barely in my vision, but definitely there, I saw them, I looked at them for about two whole breaths.

I know I can do it, I know I can bind it. If I will just STAY THERE in that intensity storm, I will bind that thing.

That's why I'm so ticked off that I didn't get to practice today--too much seventh--and why I'm also annoyed that I'm not going to be "in the zone" with Ms. Kino all weekend. Not that I had good Kapos up there in October, I had crappy ones, but the zone is the zone, man!

Let's see....

Now going to practice, with uncertain right hip, light cold, time pressure, for the first time in six days, AND with stressy plane travel coming up on Sunday. All of the indicators for "unpleasant" are in order.

This means, anything I do is good. Sun sals feel OK? Great! Win! Get into standing? Fabulous! Vinyasa down to seated? Far out! And so on.

Various fecundities.

People tell me that I write chewy Facebook updates. None of this "I'm going to class" nonsense; what you get from me is quotations from Salvador Dali and ponderances of meditation texts and obtuse references where only I know WTF I'm talking about and the rest of you have to puzzle it out (I've been doing that since I was a teenager; it used to be a way to protect myself from being honest with myself and others, and now it's just dense pomo citationism, ala Pynchon or Godard, except not always with the intellectual pedigree).

So I am probably one of the few people you know who'll title a post "Various fecundities," but so much crap has gone through and out of my head in the past four days that it has to be that and not a clear Karen-esque list.

Sunday morning I had this strange muscle-nerve spasm through the right glutes, while bending over to feed cats. Shazam! White pain! It's getting better, thanks to a big deep indulgence in Ibuprofen all day yesterday and today. I feel somehow that I'm not supposed to take the chemical road, like it's not "yoga," but I don't know what that's about and can't justify it, plus, most importantly, the medicine keeps me from having flashes of white nerve pain every damn three minutes to the point where I can't stand up, so I'm all for chemicals on this point.

I taught a class tonight and was able to do much more demonstration than on Sunday afternoon when I teach my other class. Squats with heels flat, and most forward bends, are impinged, but backbends do not seem to be (I took a high bridge as a demo). Haven't formally practiced since Saturday. Another streak of time off, and I'm beginning to think that these are necessary. Life becomes, as in November, too stressy, so much so that practice doesn't REDUCE it. Finding the time, making practice fit the schedule, that sort of thing. It desanctifies practice in a way, makes it schedulable, makes it not ordinary (in the way that enlightenment itself is ordinary) but regimented, something that "must be done," "must be fit in." Takes on a "must get my enlightenment in!" flavor, which is both desirous and pressured, both of which are no good.

At that point, life becomes practice (at least that's how I resolve the need, the commodity-like need, to practice under stress).

I drove out of tonight's park and saw nine deer in three groups of three. I was thinking, "Man, the difficult phases of a life, if we think of them as poses, they come in MONTHS of duration, it's not like you have five breaths of hard life decisions to make..."

The park itself smelled of fecundity, a sort of weird birthy rot, organic life writ in broad strokes, the full range. The mercury lights seemed to have scent. I was anxious about something, which I think is a mix of coming plane travel (to go on family tour for half of spring break) and upcoming summer money tightness before I finally begin making one-and-a-half times what I make now, when my actual job begins in August (who can believe that, still?).

The boy is nine months old now; he's currently sick with what might be conjunctivitis, which sucks, but he was ACTUALLY HEALTHY for most of month eight, and that was fantastic. He smiles at me interactively now, and I parrot back his noises, which is something like conversation. I look forward to his toddler days; I try not to resent his babydom, but I can feel the aversion built into summer, and that was only one summer, the only one of that, that there'll be. It was never my intention to misrepresent those days, and while I will never reread them (because they are a sort of containment system, like the "virus vault" in your computer software), I know now that they're a record much, MUCH moreso of my internal experience than of my external experience. The whole conversational mode in which I write, is dedicated to this; in fact, years ago when writing I intentionally left out external circumstances, purely recording my emotional states. Now that I've forgotten what the inciting circumstances were, purely due to historical distance, I CAN'T RECALL what happened in my actual "real" life (if external factors are, indeed, "more real" than internal factors) when I look through that stuff.

I've been absorbing a lot of the Sutras (Maehle's translation, from his first book) and of Ingram's stuff since the hip injury. Maehle's tone remains compelling to me, as in his writing on asana and mythology; it's got a challenge in it. Ingram, of course, also has no fear of writing with bite and challenge, but also with invitation. With one hand, it's all very simple, and with the other, "why are you here? Do you know? Are you freakin' ready for this?" It's great, it's very attractive in tone, they both are.

Maehle in Pada II goes on quite a bit about emotions and the way that the West understands emoting, itself, as somehow "more true" than other modes of expression, and that hit a big nerve for me, something I've been trying and failing to delicately and precisely say for YEARS. It's a mix of reactions to dealing with women, dealing with cultural conservatism and dealing with my bad marriage. All of these have a certain (in my experience, no gender binary intended) privileging of emotions AS ANTI-RATIONAL, over and against rationality. Not all emoting is, in fact, anti-rational, and one can certainly rationalize emotionally; there's no either-or and black-and-white binary there. We see this deployed in a lot of anti-abortion rhetoric, where children are all ideal and squishy and sunshine (as opposed to the very real social work that they ACTUALLY are) and this procedure is "genocidal" (dial up an acronym "GAP" in an internet search to find a particularly ideologically gruesome group dedicated to such rhetoric). That's pure emotionality (and one that specifically and willfully aims to subvert and deny rational response) motivated for propaganda. In my marriage, her feelings were THE TRUTH, and not to be questioned, and more specifically, not to be CONVERSED with. Not to be taken AS DIALOGUE. The problem with this, aside from the fact that it's an excellent non-relating strategy, was that much of that emotionality was about the past mistreatment by other men, and her expression of this was to bind those men to her current man and treat them to all the same napalm polemic. That NEEDED dialogue, and I tried and failed, for years, to give it some. I saw it as easing the obvious pain, and she saw it as undercutting her freedom of expression, her expression itself. It became, and literally, "You're not listening to me; YES I AM" and we were both, precisely, fantastically tragically, correct. If I could stand to write it (and I can't, I absolutely cannot), that story would make an EXCELLENT book.

But that's all content, in meditation terms. So much to say here that's already been said by masters a thousand times. Ingram's bit about not forgetting the realities that make up what he calls "training in morality," that whole piece about "as long as we do not forgo the other two trainings," the NEED to stay attached to householding, to "reality" where the training in morality occurs. Something in there FIXED my passing confusion/strain about householding versus mysticism, which I usually put in terms like householding versus warriordom. But the KEY to this fix was that Ingram FINALLY did not do what EVERY FUCKING BODY ELSE does, which is to tell me to "just move the energy over."

**ROLL EYES HERE**

In his version, the three trainings OVERLAP perhaps, but DON'T DISSOLVE INTO ONE. Train for morality with your spelling and your kitchen skills and your daily life mind; train for concentration with exaggerated states of mind; train for insight with desubjectification and all that mystical stuff. THREE THINGS, NOT, repeat fucking NOT, one thing where you just "move the spotlight."

FUCK YOU, the long, LONG endlessly fucking LONG history of motherfuckers who just told me to "change my focus, stop thinking about that, just switch the channel."

(why give insight only the name "desubjectification"? because i honestly don't know it well enough yet to call it anything else; i have no accurate name for it)

True, you're right, they PROBABLY meant, sublimate your focus on content. But since they never gave me meditation as an answer (well, more properly, they never gave me CONCRETE DIRECTIONS FOR CHANNELLING MY PAIN, which is what I needed), I read them as saying, "Stop thinking about your life, stop seeking a path, stop being alive." One can hear echoes of that all over the place in my, say, first six months' struggle with seventh series, to say nothing of my struggles with the house's pregnancy, which brings me to my NEXT topic, the whole karma show of a few posts ago.

Not human, this drive is; that's how Yoda might put it. It's the reckoning with THAT, which is so present in my writing about the pain of seventh series, not at all to underestimate the formidable insomnia or the relationship whittling which go with seventh series at all, of course. All of this about the pain of dying, the reduction, the loss, all of that, that's all got this karmic machine behind it. The bad marriage runs parallel to the same machine, not caused by it (not really, I think) and not emphasizing it; perhaps, itself, emphasized BY it. If, as Maehle puts it, karma comes to seed by past deeds of bad ethical character, then I find it interesting that I've been, desperation and desire or not, historically RELUCTANT to make what he calls "karmic bonds" sexually with many people. A sidebar on this:

Maehle on brahmacharya cites someone (I forget whom, off the top of my head) who says that a sexual relationship of any kind, casual or not, creates a "karmic bond" between the involved people. I dig that, I've always dug that, and that's what has created a lot of my reluctance. Not this silly American crap in its typical banality about "giving it up" (giving WHAT up, you idiots) and "being special" and all this equally stupid crap about "have an emotional relationship" (is THAT all you wish for? well then take my bad marriage, that was certainly "an emotional relationship"...fucking idiotic fuckwit American bullshit) so you don't have "just sex." Pfft. "Just sex." That's always annoyed the fucking piss out of me; how the fuck can you have "just sex" if there is ANYTHING AT ALL to the mind-body problem? And then alongside that, you get this valorization of monogamy and "some animals mate for life" and then all this gender crap which is constantly changing in its specifics and yet remains systematically oppressive in its larger effects, with its "sports" and "players" and the "virgin-whore complex" and the funny way in which even when third wave feminism and BUST magazine, et. al., come to the fore, a woman who sexually self-determines, STILL has to claim a certain degree of "self-righteous whoredom." What the FUCK, America. Fucking SERIOUSLY.

ANYWAY:

Does it show that I'm hot about that? At all?

Alrighty, then, "karmic bonds."

So you generate karmic bonds with those partners, which means you want to not just HAVE an ethics about your behavior but that you believe that your behavior and partner choice MEANS SOMETHING. In my practice (which was a non-practice for the first decade), this meant that I didn't want anything to do with Republicans, because I believed that something conservative would "carry over to me." Yes, that's silly, but I believed it and I practiced accordingly. I didn't want to fuck stupid people for the same reason. What if their stupidity is somehow METAPHYSICALLY CONTAGIOUS? I only wanted to fuck people that I wanted TO BE. The problem with that, was that I wanted to be the WITCH DOCTOR.

Absolutely NO ONE was smart enough, together enough, freaking OLD ENOUGH (I said when I was 21 that a 35 year old woman was probably what I needed; friends scoffed heartily at me; later at 33, I would meet, yes, a 35 year old woman, who has turned out to be just what I needed! Hah!). Everyone was vulnerable, arrogant, self-protecting, too fucking innocent or too fucking jaded, too LOCAL, too overwhelmed with their personal square yard of identity. Fucking BORING! And of COURSE I had all of those things too, and I knew it! What I hated in other people is what I wanted my imaginary partners to GROW ME OUT OF. I wanted age, experience, travelledness, a mentor, on all levels. Eventually, unable to find that, I dove in and confronted all of the accumulated fear and self-hatred and between 1993 and 2003 it was quite an adventure.

Not the adventure it's been since then.

So I've tried to make only "karmic bonds" that I won't resent, karmic bonds that if not representative of consensual joy, are at least representative of general friendliness or, failing that, honest effort even if misplaced.

Teaching has some of this same quality; there's a karmic bond to be had in really in-depth advising (see Jane Gallop for a more strictly sexual spin on education) or long-term exposure to students, where you know you've made a definite impression on people. I imagine that yoga teaching can be the same way, and I don't mean by being open to people's personal stuff (I don't mean that academically, either). A big difference there is that if you teach an asana practice that, as Larry once put it, "does you," then it's the practice that teaches and you just teach the person to, well, teach her/himself.

I'm wondering if we'll end up in Seattle for a few weeks this summer as J has floated a couple times. Or Boston for any appreciable time. Mysore-style opportunities in both locations. If I'm to miss this Kino weekend coming up in ten days (and I have really neither time nor cash, moreso no cash), then I want some freakin' training at some point, it's been since 2008 (much of what I used to call my life has been since 2008).

The warrior days are transforming into something else. Not being lost, not being destroyed; I had a crisp, really fucking clear, and in-color, climbing dream about six days ago; it was indoor routes, not rock, but that's what I am used to. I could see and FEEL the holds, feel my forearms flex, feel the muscular effort AND sweat, really fucking crisp details, man, totally tactile. That's still in me, but I don't see how life is going to permit it, at least right now; so it remains this sort of secret dancerly skill that I will have again; maybe when I'm 47 or something stupid like that.

Right hip freakout.

Muscle spasms through the right glutes yesterday morning at 8 am. As the day went on, white nerve pain turned into pink-red muscle pain, all through the glute max, over through the lateral hip (glute medius and TFL territory) and then weirdly up and down the arc of the psoas (although palpably, which means more surface musculature was involved). Not sure where the actual spasms began, but the whole "arc" of what is sometimes tight in my backbending (especially as I advance it) is now sore and touchy.

This morning, hard to move, painful to roll over, very difficult. Two hours later, I can sit here with right leg tucked up, and type this. Good progress. But no practice, very likely. It's hard to bend over without turning the knee out, it's not pain-free to walk or drive, and so on.

I have never bought the "it's an opening!" rhetoric and don't see any reason to begin now, but if the end result of this neuro-muscular spasm were to be added openness in advancing the backbends, I'd certainly take it.

Anti-gravity and such in half a dozen sentences.

Most of a week off--too sick, too seventh, too busy.

Monday night Intermediate. Six students, me included.

Bigger Bhekasana, Dhanurasanas (taking almost mid-shin now), weirdly smaller Ustrasana, Kapotasana (fight for even toe contact). Can do or demo Laghuvajrasana AT WILL.

Suprising flexibility in Pasasana (easy eight fingers both sides), Supta Vajrasana (elbows crossed), Eka Pada (right foot back with relative ease).

Could have used a dash more bandhas in Bakasana, Tittibhasana, Pincha landing.

Actually FELT the curve of the spine and the top of the lower-down in Karanda happen in SLOW MOTION. The actual lower was still ballistics, but this is a first.

Went to backbends from Karanda, more out of time than inclination. Three, eight breaths per, big, no fooling around with drops.

Tomorrow morning, we practice.